According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, literacy is being educated, cultured and having the ability to read and write. All of the readings this week help teachers to connect with students and connect students to reading and writing. In Chapter 13, Writing: Commonsense Matters in the book Adolescent Literacy, Linda Rief discusses the importance of literacy in terms of using writing to communicate “our thinking, our experiences, our knowledge, our opinions and our feelings” (Rief, 2007, p. 191), to build our skills in critical thinking. Writing gives the writer an outlet to express their critical thinking. Rief begins her chapter with the following statement:
“If we want children to become adults who are articulate, literate, and thoughtful citizens of the world, they must learn to think deeply and widely. They must commit their thinking to paper, learning how to be memoirists, poets, essayists, journalists, playwrights, activists, speechwriters, novelists, critics, scientist, historians...The problem is, this is easier said than done!” (p. 190).
Writing takes time, it takes practice. Writers need to have a reason to write and a real audience to write for. A writer needs to have a connection with a topic to write, they need to have choices of those topics. Constructive responses give writers the chance to expand their work through drafts and conferences with teachers. A writer’s notebook is helpful to beginning writers as a place to collect their thoughts, then build on those thoughts and expand those writings. Just as it is important for a teacher to know their students in order to be able to teach them, teachers must know their students to be able to give them books to read that interest them. Reading topics of interest give writers more to write about. Rief brings up the use of tellingboards for beginning writers. Tellingboards help writers to turn their thoughts and pictures into words. It is the beginning process of writing, it gives writers the chance to be able to move their thoughts around to form a writing that flows together to make sense. Technology comes to play to give students new opportunities to become writers, whether through blogs, glogs or wikis, students have different mediums to express their ideas. Technology will help to engage students in writing.
The following video is entitled “A Vision of K-12 Students Today”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8&NR=1
In Chapter 15, Making it Matter Through the Power of Inquiry, authors Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith express the importance of engaging students, especially boys to improve literacy. Wilhelm and Smith give three principles that need to be in the classroom in order to engage students.
“As teachers, we must
1. Structure instruction to directly and explicitly address questions of genuine importance
2. Expand notions of text and curriculum, and what counts as meaningful reading and learning
3. Expand notions of competence, especially student competence, and find more ways to highlight, celebrate, name and extend it” (p. 233).
As teachers, we need to help students find a way to connect to the text and find the importance or significance in it, by giving them a variety of readings or alternative texts on a related topic. Students need to be confident, to feel competent in their abilities. Teachers need to take the opportunity to embrace what the students know instead of focusing on what they do not know. “Who enjoys feeling dumb all the time?” (p. 239). As teachers we need to see what students can do, we need to find texts that students connect to and use those texts ‘bridge the gap’ to those literacies that students need to know.
In Chapter 18, Effective Teachers, Effective Instruction, author Richard L. Allington stresses the need to improve the level of adolescent literacy. Allington provides aspects that were found in effective teachers’ classrooms. The first was the use of multiple texts. Having a variety of texts available to students gave them the chance to find different ways to connect to the main text, connecting on different levels to meet with more students. Teacher help students learn comprehension strategies to use with these texts. Teachers motivate students to read across different subject areas by linking the students’ personal reading to classroom texts. Teachers encourage literate conversation to improve literacy development and content knowledge. Discussion encourages students to share knowledge they might not have realized they had. This gives students a chance to consider different perspectives and grow to respect different ideas and points of view. Effective teachers make connections with different classroom lesson and with students’ knowledge or lives outside of school. To be effective teachers, we need to be willing to change the way we teach, we need to know our students and their interests and we need to connect to their interests and integrate those interests in our classrooms. The following video is entitled “You Can’t be my Teacher” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VSymMbMYHA
In the reading by Robert Moses introducing the Algebra Project and the videos on Dr. Tuck’s blog we are shown the importance of advocating for social change. I have thought of literacy only in terms of reading and writing, but literacy needs to be considered in terms of much more. The mathematical illiteracy that we are facing prevents the students coming out of school today from being successful. As times have changed and technology has advanced, we need to have students proficient in not only reading and writing, but also in science and math in order to fill the jobs available today and the ones that will be available tomorrow. We need to invest in our students to create active learners. To do this we need to be effective teachers, we need to give students the confidence to learn and they will demand the opportunity to learn. This is the way to move from mathematical illiteracy to a society literate in reading, writing and math. By being overall effective teachers, we can help students to become literate in all subject areas.
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